At Building Windows 8 blog today, Microsoft detailed the digital identity management improvements that’s coming with Windows 8. Everyday we use handful of websites that leads us to maintain atleast 10 different username/password combinations. There are efforts to reduce this overhead such as Facebook login API, OpenID, Windows Live ID API, etc,. But Windows 8 is trying to solve this problem in a different way that is more secure than the other online identity provider’s attempts. Windows 8 will allow you to store your username and passwords in a secure manner.

The first is by providing a way to automatically store and retrieve multiple account names and passwords for all the websites and applications you use, and do so in a protected manner. Internet Explorer 10 uses the credentials that we store to remember names and passwords for websites you visit (if you choose). In addition, anyone building a Metro style app can use a direct API to securely store and retrieve credentials for that app. (It is important to note that IE respects instructions from websites about saving your credentials – some websites specifically request that passwords not be saved.)

The real beauty of this system is when you are using your Windows Live ID, when you login to another Windows 8 PC all your passwords get sync’d automatically.